The Herald Statesman from Yonkers, New York • 10

I slia It- 1 'jOA Sunday. November 16. 197 1 isi 4 may spread blame in Son of Sarfi killings as he lay dead in his By Varner BUS Writer to a sketch coffin. David Berkowitz, the postal 'worker from Yonkers who said he tarorized New York City as the 08 20 ye 8V was tightened himself last week by a arision, series that promised to ye the case once and for all. The New of the murder victims Doting Lauria and Christine were cult hits.

Even Feder conceded the point Former Yonkers police Detective Mike Novotny, a private investigator who worked on the investigation with Terry in the early 1980s, also said the WABC series was nothing I hadnt heard before. Terry, who said he hap a professional and cordial" relationship with defends the con- rapher Ronald Sissman in Greenwich Village on Oct 30, 1977. Sissman, said Terry, was killed because he filmed the last of the Son of Sam shootings, the murder of Stacy Moskowitz in Brooklyn. According to this scenario, photographer and alleged cultist Robert Mapplethorpe hired a man now imprisoned for bank robbery in Alabama to arrange the murder of Sissman and retrieve the film of the Moskowitz shooting. The convict, evidence.

That new evidence consists mainly of the testimony of Turner and a man Terry and the WABC series identified only as The Artist" This person, who appeared in the series in a disguise, said he Was briefly involved in cult activities in Untermyer Park in Yonkers before the' Son of Sam crimes occurred. He sketched several members the cult and identified them fix' including the owner 'of the Purchase house. The Artist matched this unnamed cult leader Terry said. He wont say who they are, feeing public' exposure will sidetrack the, investigation and cause them to flee the country. They have got to go," Terfy said.

They've been polluting the American underground since the late 1960s. How are. theyMowed to. exist?" The hext media step will be two. hourlong Son of Sam specials, one as yet unscheduled by WABC-Ty, one Nov.

22 en the network. Terry said it all could, lead to a string of indictments as many as 12 people, according to the unnamed federal official and could solve murders Mated to the Son of Sam case. More than 20 people who had ties to the cult were killed alter the Son Sam shooting, said Terry, in many cases because they were considered likely to confess. There are as many as 10 Process members still living in Westchester, Jesse Turner, said -he pulled it off, victs credibility, and he appeared briefly in the You dont have to take his word, WABC series. He was brought from but when you find other evidence Yftrk (5ty Police Depart; ment considered the case closed alter Berkowitz pleaded guilty, to killing six people and wounding seven others between July 29, 1976, and July .31, 1977.

Ber-hrrested outside Pine Street in to life in sentenced his credibility is said. The cult story was considered credible enough fix' Queens District Attorney John Santucd to reopen the Son of Sam case in 1979. San-tued also concluded that Berkowitz did not act. but lacking enough evidence to file charges, he the probe in 1961 Mary DeBotfrbon, spokeswomen for the Queens District Attorney's Office, said New York police detectives working on the Sissman case made a presentation of a Son of Sam conspiracy theory to District Attorney Richard Brown last year, but that it induded no substantial new evidence. We came away frwilhat presentation thinking thautwas nothing more than speculation and surmise, nothing to go to a grand jury with.

And that is where we left it," DeBourbon said. kowitz, who was his apartment or Yonkers, was prison and is serving time at Sullivan County Correctional Facility in Fallsburg. When he got nervous about his role in the series, which appeared last week on four editions of WABC-TVs 11 p.m. news, Berkowitz called the man who has almost single-handedly kept the Son of Sam story alive: free-lance writer and TV producer Maury Terry. Dont worry.

It will pass," Terry told Berkowitz, It'll be fine. Itll be fine. Terry, who sold WABC a three-hour videotaped interview with Berkowitz stick in May, reminded him that televisions in the prison are turned off at 11 p.m. So neither Berkowitz nor the other inmates the series. That's important, his prison cell to New York City for extensive police interviews last year, Terry said.

Mapplethorpe died AIDS in .1983. When someone inside the NYpD realized the Sissman murder- was related to. the Son of Sam case, Terry has alleged, high-ranking po- lice officials shut the investigation. story also was told by an unidentified federal official who appeared on camera with his bee hidden and his voice altered. However, WABC news director Bart Feder said the station confirmed the "identity and credibility of the official William Allee, the NYPD's chief of detectives, confirmed part of the story.

We did have an investigation by. our cult case squad last year, Allee said, adding that it began in April 1996 and ended this year. "Detectives interviewed Turner, and he gave them some Information. He identified twp individuals, we spoke to those people and they retained attorneys. But we never had enough evidence to make an ar- a rest Allee denied that there was an NYPD cover-up.

Every person closely involved in the Son of Sam case has long retired. No one here is in a position to pull any strings to protect anyone's reputation. But we base our' work on development of bets, not. on people's theories that are unsubstantiated, Allee said. Allee also said he thought the Sissman murder was drug-related, and that the Sissman investigation did not shed significant new light mi the Son of Sam case.

StMlnW tchterT The most interesting new story from Berkowitz is that the Process held a meeting in Purchase in 1976 at which plans for some type of terror campaign were hatched. The group supposedly considered a Manson-type mass murder in Westchester County, and the kidnapping and ritual minder of young women, before settling on the. Son of Sam shooting spree. Terry said he spent months try-' ing to persuade Berkowitz to speak out in May, and succeeded through an appeal to the convict's Christian conscience (Berkowitz converted in 1987) and because of new because Berkowitz had his throat cut by another inmate 15 years ago and still fears bring labeled 4 snitch. Terry also' told Berkowitz that developments in the case have made him less of a hub of the investigation and more of a spoke bn the wheeL Terry said it would eventually be established that Berkowitz puljed the trigger on onfy two of the eight shootings, and that in the Son of Sam case will be among other members of Satanic cult that he and the WABC series accuse r'yrt4t- Its About Time For.

Terry, who has spent 20 years working to. prove the shootings were part of a national conspiracy to create murderous mayhem, said he thought he was on the verge of getting the alleged, masterminds indicted. He, and WABC, said two law enforcement agencies are investigating the Son pf Sam case and related crimes. One of those is the Yonkers Terry was hoping r. -5nl fllil stories There are several other problems with the series, including that much of it consists of Berkowitz confirming theories in Terry's 1987 boric, The Ultimate Evil, or repeating stories Berkowitz told in his last on-camera interview with Terry, in 1993.

For example, in the May interview Berkowitz identified the cult as the Process, a group formed in England in the early 1960s as an oflfehoot of the Church of Scientology. Terry charged in his book that Process leaders arranged for the Son of Sam murders, as well as those committed by Charles Man-son and his followers. No Process leaders have ever been indicted for homicide. Berkowitz also repeated his assertion that there were five other Son of Sam shooters, and that two hursdav, November 20 make a public statementoonfirming thpFan ongoing the WABC report Sk' 5 investigation has uncovered corroborating evidence of a conspiracy." But Police Commissioner Donald Christopher did not respond, and other bey officials in the Detective Division refined to confirm or. deny the report Terry also said the NYPD began to look into the murder Of photog- The real Santa come to The Galleria at 5i00 pm on a specially decorated holiday bus, ctxutesy of the Bee Line Bus System, I 1 q.iinnn nim mi THE VILLAGE OF MAMARONECK AND nil 1 KU.

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